Religious leaders have also jumped on the bandwagon, perhaps fearing they were losing ground in the self-righteous league table. Apparently, Pope Francis said the halting response to climate change reminded him of a phrase from the Old Testament — Humankind is a stupid and stubborn man that does not see [probably mis-handled Proverb]. It can only be a matter of time before someone predicts Fire and Brimstone to accompany the next ‘extreme’ weather event.
With few exceptions, the mainstream media are also singing from the same hymn sheet.
Perhaps Terry Pratchett summed it up best: “In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.”
While there may be differences of opinion in terms of what the scientific method is, and how scientific knowledge should be applied, it is rarely the actual science that is at fault but rather the presentation.
From Structure of Scientific Revolutions at Fifty
"By defining science in terms of rational criteria of empirical observation, Popper seemed to place scientific tools equally in the hands of philosophers of science, skeptics, and common persons who needed some means to question scientists who tried to back their claims by appealing to their own scientific authority. For Popper, novel scientific theories should be greeted with skepticism from the outset. But for Kuhn, one of the key characteristics of the healthy functioning of the community of scientists is its practice of singling out a successful theory from its competitors — without concern for its social implications, and in isolation from public scrutiny.
In a sense, Popper and Kuhn each saw himself as a defender of free inquiry — but their notions of free inquiry were fundamentally opposed. Kuhn’s thesis reserved free inquiry specifically for scientists, by considering legitimate whatever paradigm scientists happened to agree upon at a given time. But Popper, given his longstanding concern for the open society, thought that this idea marginalized the role of skepticism, only regarding it as important at the point of crisis...
At one time, science was simply regarded as a body of knowledge arrived at via measurement and observation, and therefore free from human bias and political chicanery. If only life was so simple. Communism, remember, liked to consider itself ‘scientific and religion free (the opium of the masses)’ but there was a problem. It didn’t work.
“The hostility of the state would be assured toward any system or science that might not strengthen its arm.”
~Henry Brooks Adams
“Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts.”
~Richard Feynman
This could be re-phrased as:
Scientism is ignorance of the beliefs of the experts. ~webolife
Brigit Bara wrote:During high school, or perhaps in College, students then learn a little of Karl R. Popper's standard of falsifiability. That is, in order to distinguish a scientific theory from any other claim that may be made, and subsequently "proven" by observations and experiment, the scientific theory must have some test which, if it failed, would falsify the original claims of the theory. This is a very important parameter, because it aids in discovering if a theory is making claims which actually cannot be tested.
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